If there was ever any thought of wanting the game to run on Linux or Mac, why did he base it on CryENGINE to begin with? Isn't that sort of stupid? Really, isn't that all kinds of stupid? I should think that developers would have learned better by now.

I don't think there was - he chose an engne to work on the platform everyone makes games for - Windows. then he adds the poll option "d'ya want it on Linux?" and 21% of responders have said "yes".

That does mean 79% think other factors are more important.

so whilst I think it would make sense to think linux at the start of every project, especially now that Steam's opinion is known, it wasn't the position he started from. I wonder how much work has already started with CryEngine, and whether its too late to change, or too late to get CryEngine updated to work with Linux proper (if it already works on Android, I can't see it being too difficult a task).

I don't think there was - he chose an engne to work on the platform everyone makes games for - Windows. then he adds the poll option "d'ya want it on Linux?" and 21% of responders have said "yes".

That does mean 79% think other factors are more important.

From the Star Citizen FAQ on kickstarter:

Star Citizen is a PC game through and through and could never be played on the Xbox 360, Playstation 3 or WiiU. We currently plan to support Windows and are examining our options regarding possible Linux and Macintosh releases. The Cloud Imperium team includes many Linux and Macintosh fans!

Even with some core team members who are Linux and Mac fans, they picked the engine they thought would make the game most outstanding on Windows, since that's their only mandatory platform to be successful on a large scale. However, if there proves to be enough interest in the game on other PC platforms, then they have good business reasons to invest some of the additional money to extend their market to these new groups, and boost team morale as a bonus. How many Wi

It all depends on how stripped down the Android version is compared to Cryengine proper.

The elephant in the room though is how you are gonna get the driver stability and performance out of Linux, thanks to the totally fucked up relationship Torvalds and the devs have with GPU manufacturers (Yeah I'm sure flipping off Nvidia because they won't jump through your little hoops is the mature way to handle dealings with a billion dollar corporation that millions of your users depend on, smooth move there) becaus

Ahhh all bullshit. If whomever sees that Linux wants to pay, will make the companies make (at the very least) better drivers to support their engine, then it will happen. Look at the state of ARM. Set top boxes, phones, tablets of all sizes will be able to run it. 2 million in cash makes its it even better. Now a Linux, Android port makes even more sense. They can now make a Linux port an be compatible with virtually all machines and OS's. I can set up a S4 Pro chip or a host of others that can play t

Are you being obtuse on purpose, or are you just a damned fanboi? Because you can NOT be seriously comparing AN EMBEDDED SOLUTION where the OEMs control ALL of the hwardware AND the code to an actual general purpose operating system, can you? Surely to God you can't be making such a pathetic comparison? That is like saying "Linux is ready for grandma's laptop because her router runs Busybox"...yeah, great analogy there, a hardened embedded OS that for 99.995% of the population will NEVER change one single b

Yeah I'm sure flipping off Nvidia because they won't jump through your little hoops is the mature way to handle dealings with a billion dollar corporation that millions of your users depend on, smooth move there

Thanks for the link, which just proves what I have been saying for years, which is you CAN NOT build ANY commercial software and have ANY interaction with FOSS. This is why Canonical is doomed, why Valve will fail with Steam on Linux, because unless you are willing to suck down the koolaid and be a 100% FOSS company the devs will go out of their way to fuck you and break your stuff.

There had been a split for years in the FOSS camp, with the pragmatists that wanted to give people a more open (but still usabl

Apple didn't "go with" BSD for OS X, it came as part of the NeXTStep bits, which predate Linux by several years (first commercial release in 1989 for NeXTStep vs 0.1 or whatever in 1991 for Linux).

NeXTStep was a microkernel, with a BSD "personality" module (so people could run portable software), and an advanced (at the time) GUI. IIRC there were plans for other "personality" modules, but I don't think any were ever built... people wanted NeXT GUI software for everything that wasn't "good enough" on the BSD

You can use closed-source software in an open source ecosystem, whatever gave you the idea that you can't? Also, commercial is not the same as open source - look at Quake 1, 2 and 3, totally open yet the games themselves still cost money.

However, Nvidia is a special case - their drivers are NOT their core business model, and developing Open Source ones (or even better, join the Nouveau effort) would, in the long run, gain them so much. Right now it's a bit of a "Meh" situation - but imagine 10 years down th

Except they CAN'T go Open Source, which you and every dev on the damned planet refuse to fricking accept! Let me make this clear, there is PATENTED TECH in ALL graphics cards which they CAN NOT SHARE, not because they want to keep it closed, but because its connected with the DRM used in HDCP, which is the ONLY way the *.A.As will allow High Def video on the PC!

Besides why the fuck should they care WHAT the FOSS camps want when they've shown themselves to be hypocritical self serving douches? AMD did EXACTL

First off: Nvidia can choose any GPLv2 compatible license they want, including GPLv2 itself. It CANNOT choose GPLv3 because it's incompatible with GPLv2 (though not GPLv2+, but kernel is GPLv2 and not GPLv2+).

Secondly: Why can't those few, specific parts that must be closed be pushed into a binary blob with hooks in the more open source core? Sounds to me it should be possible especially with a BSD-style license. It could be possible, for instance, to just keep the encryption closed while everything else is

/facepalm/ Did you not even read the very first sentence before you replied? which part of CAN'T DO IT is so damned hard to understand?

As for why they can't just "put those parts" into a binary...because it won't fricking work? you are talking about gutting the very HEART of the system, what would that accomplish? Would it make the devs quit acting like douches and breaking the drivers? Nope because its not GPL V3 so they wouldn't be "supporting the spirit of Open Source" and the devs would go right on bein

"As for why they can't just "put those parts" into a binary...because it won't fricking work? you are talking about gutting the very HEART of the system, what would that accomplish?"

Spoken like a person who haven't ever refactored code. Yes you can move those business-critical parts into their own functions, and then move those specific functions into a binary blob. BSD allows for that. But seems you can't compreh

What the fuck...you no spek the english? They DO NOT OWN the guts, its patented by several companies that are NOT Nvidia so they can't change SHIT when it comes to licensing, okay? They DO NOT OWN HDCP and it is THOSE parts being used in GP-GPU to cut down on waste and to keep from having to double the size of the die, but they DO NOT OWN this, okay? What part of DO NOT OWN is so damned hard to grasp? I don't care what fucking license you name, BSD, MPL, fucking ABCD, they CAN NOT DO IT anymore than you can

You should know by now that the only thing accomplished by dealing with a FOSS fanboy is an increase in blood pressure. Let them live in their own little reality - so long as it's insulated from the rest of us, they can be as deluded as they want to be.:)

Actually as a retailer I consider it a public service to show what religious morons they are and what an absolute failure their OS is, so that others will see its a waste of time and completely pointless.

Year after year it gets worse, NOT better, because at the end of the day the FOSSie devs make damned sure to break every single thing that isn't "pure GPL"which since there isn't ANY hardware that is GPL on X86 all they do is fuck shit up for everybody.

The main problem between mr torvalds and nvidia, is that up to that point nvidia has never ever wanted to collaborate with them, nor even try to use whatever already exist in linux.nvidia wanted the lazy way and share as much code as possible. their current way to do things is throw everything in the garbage and do things their own way. the problem is that this doesn't play nice with everyone else (including Intel hardware) and thus some functionality is completely broken (Optimus only works though third pa

Because Chris felt that consoles couldn't deliver his vision for the game and originally wanted the game to be PC only. There was a lot of call from fans on the game forums asking about Linux/Mac ports, so now he's looking into the possibility of providing support for those platforms. It's called listening to your target audience, and it's nice to see a company that is actually prepared to do that these days.

What I find far more interesting is the current poll standings for the additional platform support; 23% of the voters want a Linux port vs. only 8% for MacOS. Seriously? Almost a quarter of space/flight sim fans run Linux? I know FlightGear is good, but who knew?

What I find far more interesting is the current poll standings for the additional platform support; 23% of the voters want a Linux port vs. only 8% for MacOS. Seriously? Almost a quarter of space/flight sim fans run Linux? I know FlightGear is good, but who knew?

I don't understand why the geek gives an online poll any credibility whatever.

The online poll is trivially easy to manipulate. It is not a random sampling of the potential market for anything.

Perhaps you missed the skepticism in my second point - you know, all those question marks and the use of the word "seriously"?

Of course on-line polls are often easy to manipulate, as Slashdot's poll box likes to remind us, but given the options on this particular poll why would the manipulators apparently single out the options for supporting Linux or MacOS when there are other, more entertaining options? There is also the complication that you need to pick three options, so if someone were poll stuffin

Because of their budget, they can't justify creating a new engine, and CryEngine currently does everything they need in order to create the game they want to make. While it doesn't currently support Linux, the engine may be ported because of this game, which is the point of this article.

Are you one of those people who only uses sporks because you never know if your mom might be serving soup with your meal and don't want to look "all kinds of stupid" for having to get up and get a spoon out of the utensil dr

If there was ever any thought of wanting the game to run on Linux or Mac, why did he base it on CryENGINE to begin with?

Because for most projects those are nonsense pipe dreams. 90% of the desktop market is windows, and a large portion of the mac and linux gamers have windows installs already. Doing a Mac/Linux port is good press and good karma, and sometimes a way to keep the linux/mac nerds on staff happy, but from a business perspective it's usually mind numbingly stupid, and throwing money away on bad ideas is a way to find yourself looking for work.

I played Wing Commander all night last night on my Tandy 2500SX/20. Down to the last mission at Venice. Beat it a couple times but my wingman keeps dying. I also played it a few years ago on Dosbox. Somehow it's much more fun on the Tandy, even if it's a little slow when there's 8 ships in play. I'm building a 486 for the rest of the series. WCII should play just right with the turbo off.

When you build your 486, get Red Baron also. Other games I enjoyed from that era but you might not be interested are Quest for Glory series, Stunts, Xwing, and a really under appreciated game: Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe. I have fond memories of flying a B-17, and after bombing my target, doing strafing runs on it so my campaign advanced further:P Eventually I got so slick that I'd do a 1/2 barrel roll and strafe the targets with the top turret as well:P

I played Wing Commander all night last night on my Tandy 2500SX/20. [...] I also played it a few years ago on Dosbox. [...] I'm building a 486 for the rest of the series.

I'm building my own OS. The x86 bootloader starts in Real Mode - Just like "DOS". Right at boot on any of your x86 machines you can write text/attributes and/or graphics directly to video memory (@ B800h for EGA/VGA text). No drivers needed because modern BIOSs, and GPUs provide the old interrupt table and CGA/EGA/MCGA/VGA video modes for backwards compatibility. You can use int 13h to do your disk services. Play sounds to the PC speaker. It's just like writing assembly back in the good 'ol 286 days -

Kickstarter is only providing part of the funding. The bulk of the funding has been made at the main site [robertsspa...stries.com] for the game, and the combined total of both sites is currently standing at just over $2.7m.

Nevermind. I hadn't realized this whole time that the website's tally was already including the Kickstarter funds. WOW. They're doing far worse than I thought. This whole time, I was thinking "holy shit, they are going to reach most of their extended goals by the end, with almost four million raised already!".

With only about $3m raised, I would hope they would just focus on one solid game and worry about a fucking linux port when and if the main platform is successful and justifies the expense.

The basic goal was $2m. The extended goals were $3m, $4m, $6m (it looks like they've since added them at every 500k, though).

At any rate, having the extended goals seems a little unnecessary. They're going to have a hell of a time accomplishing even the most basic concept at three million bucks -- even considering that this funding isn't to create the whole game, but just to help get a showing of support to then reach out to more traditional investment (as they already stated at the beginning of the fundrai

Not really. The kickstarted is currently trending towards 1.6 million alone, about double what it is now. Getting 5-6$ million is impossible, I'd expect them to hit around $4m based on the usual patterns for these games. If it trends like Project Eternity did, it'll hit around $5.5m, but that would take a large last minute rush... which an announcement of Linux support might do.

Oh, how do you figure? The traditional investment portion was to be some $8M (to bring the budget up to ~$10M), and is supposedly already lined up, modulo the initial funding goal (I believe Chris stated as much during one of the Reddit AMA's).

Moreover, of all the extended goal possibilities in the poll, which do you seriously believe would go toward bringing in new backers? More missions than before? More NPCs? I suspect that the lion's share of backers who would be swayed by those (and the "improved F

of all the extended goal possibilities in the poll, which do you seriously believe would go toward bringing in new backers? More missions than before? More NPCs? I suspect that the lion's share of backers who would be swayed by those (and the "improved FPS mode"...) have already pledged.

That's me! I'm only going to pledge if there are at least 20 more NPCs! I don't know how many there are now, but there must be more!!!

J/K. In this household we're holding out for Linux support, and strongly hope for Mac for the sake of a couple other friends. The windows gamers in our group are also not likely to pledge without platform support, because they are busy engineers who nowadays mostly just play online games with our group.

Pardon, the outside funding is around $10M, not the total funding goal, crowd-sourcing included. I think there is enough funding to extend the goals beyond the original scope (which I agree would have been impossible to meet, even in the $4-5M range).

That said, for a project of this size, that isn't that great of a budget. We're either looking at something rather mediocre in the genre that has been stale for ages (so even mediocre will look great), or they will go looking for more funding at some point.

When the original "Wing Commander" was released for DOS, many hardcore Amiga/Atari ST gamers bought PCs just to be able to play it. No game before it had the kind of graphics, story or space combat that Wing Commander offered. And this one game (plus the hugely innovative Ultima Underworld perhaps) turned PCs into a potent gaming machine overnight. ---- Star Citizen may very well do the same for Linux. A Chris Roberts Space Game + Internet Massively Multiplayer + Cryengine 3 graphics + Newtonian Physics simulation on everything in game + Linux = Nerd Heaven!!! ------- I say "Go, Chris Roberts, Go! Bring SC and CryEngine 3 to Linux!!!"

The Christ Roberts part ok.MMO not so much. If its 'popular' there are tons of griefers. If its unpopular its a ghost town.Cry engine 3. Could care less so long as it looks good and plays cool. Plus whatever he does will not be ported over to the real engine anyway...Newtonian physics. This will *suck*. This has been tr

Newtonian physics. This will *suck*. This has been tried many times. It usually makes for a painful game to play. Its realistic but usually makes for a pinball machine sort of gameplay. I have played several of these games all the way thru. With a story as good as the original WC. But they were a horrible exercise of fuel management and strafing.

Depends, if he was going full 100% real physics I'd agree, but he isn't. He's going mostly accurate, but with enough leeway to actually make it fun, which is very much possible (I've played several games that have done it). And it isn't a full-on MMO, it's more of an instanced persistent set of servers, so griefing is unlikely to be an issue, and even if it is a "ghost town" you can still play the single-player story without caring. Besides, a game like this, the players themselves will be able to band toge

Newtonian physics. This will *suck*. This has been tried many times. It usually makes for a painful game to play. Its realistic but usually makes for a pinball machine sort of gameplay.

From his descriptions, he's found a cheap way out of that: The physics are real, but your ship has so much intelligence of its own, that you tell to what you want to do, and it will fire the correct thrusters at the correct time for the correct duration to do it. Thus, steering is still easy to do.

This is even dynamic, so if one of your thrusters gets shot down, the computer tries to compensate for that as far as it is possible.

Presumably, one of the newtonian physics games you played was Terminus. While some do not like this, others do. Personally I found Terminus so nice, that whenever I play a non newtonian space "sim", I end up stopping being interested very fast.

The only problem is that if you want to run a newtonian space combat sim, you more or less need two joysticks, one for yaw and pitch and one for vertical and horizontal strafing, and most good joysticks only come in right handed variants.

AFAIK, it was more because a new PC clone/parts were cheaper than other platforms while still offering equal or superior sound/video abilities. (My family switched from Apple IIgs to PCs back then in part so I could play the latest Ultima games, but we wouldn't have been able to do it without favorable pricing.) You're conflating two separate years & shifts in computer ownership, though:

--In 1990-1991, PCs were just starting to dominate the market, and Origin Systems released Wing Commander, Wing Com

This game appeals to a large portion of the population. The number of Windows users greatly outweighs the number of Linux users. Of those who run Linux, few lack the access to Windows or ability to use it. Even if the backers WANT to have Linux support, it isn't surprising to prefer other additions to the game. Given all that, 22% is a really large proportion to see for this work-intensive effort which will not improve the quality of the game.

Asking for something that is a nice, slightly easier way to use the product doesn't equate to demand. Most of these people will simply boot windows to play. In the end there is little to no lost audience to this issue regardless of "would you want one" poll numbers.

It's nice to entertain thoughts about windows not being the only game in town when it comes to PC gaming. But that is simply the reality at the moment. And as long as windows can be easily booted on the same PCs that runs linux when needed, there

These offerings are aimed at people who are hardcore enough to invest money into something that isn't ready and not even guaranteed to ever come out. If you haven't invested into a current status quo gamer OS, how can these projects possibly target you? They'd likely have to shake every one of your kind for four-five digits EACH to break even and you can't be bothered even spend two digits to play huge game libraries available today.

Question: doesn't modern linux have hibernation just like windows does? I rarely if ever boot windows since XP SP2 times other then for updates that require full restart. Instead I just hibernate the machine when leaving it. So no need to close any of my programs, they're all immediately available upon restart/resume in the state I left them in.

Being on slashdot frontpage is a decent first step to letting Linux gamers know about the existence and possible relevance of Star Citizen; my guess is a lot of us read slashdot (I have for many years, though only recently converted from anonymous coward)

I pretty much doubt this will even be CLOSE to a triple A title. Starlancer was no Wing Commander. And even though much of the problem with that game was Microsoft buying it and rushing it out the door. Though if they hadn't it would have been a case like 38 Studios, where the game never gets finished, and the devs go tits up.

Stepping aside from whether there is significant reason to be skeptical about the success Star Citizen itself... the OP claim was that the *game engine* is AAA class. Are you going to dispute that CryENGINE 3 is not being used for AAA titles? How about the first two Crysis games which have each sold in the millions? I suspect some of the other stuff currently in development will also qualify as AAA titles.

An Engine does not a good game make. The engine is great, what is being done WITH the engine is what I'm talking about. Roberts did Wing Commander 22 years ago and was AWESOME, then came WC2 and it was no longer his baby and instead he made Strike Commander which was pretty meh in 93 [19 years ago] WC3 and 4 [as well as privateer] were decent games if you don't put too much into the "Acting" that went into the cut scenes. Roberts wanted to do movies, but it SUCKED and now is back trying to make a couple gam

Those are all legitimate opinions. It looked like you might be arguing with the original post, but I guess you're not. Regardless of whether Star Citizen is an awesome game like original Wing Commander (as some of us hope), the side-effect of having a sweet game engine be ported to non-windows desktops could be enough for some Linux/Mac gamers to pledge some money to the project (those who don't dual-boot and who are fortunate to have some discretionary money to throw around).

I am finished with dual-booting just to slurp up the latest and greatest games. The last console I purchased was a Playstation 2, and that was about a decade ago. I have the tablet that supports the most games (guess what one!) and a computer that runs a non-Windows OS.

It is a pretty simple thing to use one of the many multi-platform game development engines that are kicking about these days. If a game producer decides not to release a game on my OS, they will not see a sale. It's as simple as that.

A sensible policy! Supposing your non-Windows OS is either Linux or Mac OS, are you interested in increasing the number of titles available by having another big game engine support it? Or is CryENGINE just not your style (it is rather different than DF after all).

"could turn out to be the high-profile game that brings a AAA game engine to the growing Mac and Linux gaming communities"Is he trying to make out CryEngine 3 will be the first AAA game engine on Mac and Linux? I guess the Quake, ID Tech, Unreal and Source (been on Mac for a while, Linux is in Beta now) engines done count?

"could turn out to be the high-profile game that brings a AAA game engine to the growing Mac and Linux gaming communities"
Is he trying to make out CryEngine 3 will be the first AAA game engine on Mac and Linux? I guess the Quake, ID Tech, Unreal and Source (been on Mac for a while, Linux is in Beta now) engines done count?

No, the point is that this game could bring *another* AAA game engine to Mac and Linux, namely CryENGINE. There was no mention of the word "first", but some of us are still excited at the prospect of another former Windows** gaming stronghold going cross-platform. It is not a frequent event that this happens, but your examples are all good ones as well!

The developers of the futuristic racer Distance (12 days to go on Kickstarter [kickstarter.com]) has tried a beta of Unity 4 on Linux, and now says that they will definitelly bring the game out on Linux as well.

If there is such a large support for the space-flight sim. genre in the Linux community, then they might consider Strike Suit Zero [kickstarter.com], with a stretch goal of $180k that will make them deliver a Linux version.

Or you could just go with the brilliant open-source version of FreeSpace 2 http://scp.indiegames.us/ [indiegames.us].Actually this is several games include a fun Bablyon 5 game and at least two Battlestart Galatica games along with both FS1 and FS2 ($6 each at gog.com) which with modem graphics stand up very well. The is even a really good new Wing Commander game http://www.wcsaga.com/ [wcsaga.com] (still needs Wine at the moment, but they are working on it)

Just to clarify a common misunderstanding in the original article: Wasteland was not a trigger factor in getting Unity ported to Linux. The project Kickstarter happened to coincide with the announcement of the platform support, but did not cause it. Dedicated developers had been working on the port for a long time before it was announced.
One does not simply walk into Linux.

Oh, is that what it is? I thought it was the Teletubbies. All I could see was a bunch of guys in fat suits waddling up and down until one of them falls over and starts to cry, and then the others run up and give him a hug.

Oh, is that what it is? I thought it was the Teletubbies. All I could see was a bunch of guys in fat suits waddling up and down until one of them falls over and starts to cry, and then the others run up and give him a hug.

That looks like a pretty weaksauce "sport", to be honest.

Never really quite understood American Football...

Now Rugby, that is a game I can respect: all of the full-contact fun of American Football but none of the armour nor any of the all-too-frequent breaks... And a damn site more fun to play in either its full-contact or touch versions.

NFL isn't my favorite thing to watch, but there's something to be said for a spectacle that brings the biggest, strongest, fastest athletes in the world, and puts them in direct physical contact.

Vernon Davis, for instance, is 6'3", 250 lbs. with abs. Bench Presses 225 for 33 reps, vertical jumps 42 inches, runs 100m in 10.7 seconds. You won't find any athlete in any other sport who is more of a well-rounded athlete than that.

What a weird mixture of units you're using there! So, where's the exceptional bit in these numbers? That guy is a bit taller than me, not quite as heavy, sounds like he can't lift as much but is distinctly faster in a sprint (but I do wonder how he'd cope with a lengthy bike ride, or even a day's walking).

I guarantee you can not like 225 for 33 reps (~100kg/2 plates). It's similar to a 380 pound bench press for a single rep according to strstd.com. That would be enough to win powerlifting competitions, for instance the Arnold http://www.usapowerlifting.com/results/2012/2012_Arnold_Results.htm [usapowerlifting.com] has people his weight lifting less than that.

A 10.7s 100m run would be an Olympic record for men 100 years ago. It's faster t

Vernon Davis, for instance, is 6'3", 250 lbs. with abs. Bench Presses 225 for 33 reps, vertical jumps 42 inches, runs 100m in 10.7 seconds. You won't find any athlete in any other sport who is more of a well-rounded athlete than that.

Then realise that this is Rugby, where a forward will tackle someone at that speed, put him down hard, and then bounce up to tackle his mate since the other bugger probably got a pass in before he went to ground.

If I wanted to consume some sort of televised spectator sport, I wouldn't do it in an manner that forces me to be a slave to a network schedule. This is 2012. I can skip through the commercials and annoying time outs.

Linux even makes football better. Doens't matter if the rubes know it.

Success? What success? He's raised a bunch of money by promising a whole lot of people something that it's probably going to be impossible to deliver on. When you raise people's expectations this much, you can only fail.

Impossible? Why impossible? He's using Cryengine, has additional private investment funds, and has already designed a very impressive prototype. Check the videos on the site sitebar: http://www.robertsspaceindustries.com/star-citizen/